January 27, 2008

I've been here before, to show you the setting of the 10 Commandments monument that the Supreme Court — in Van Orden v. Perry — said did not violate the Establishment Clause. But I'm back here in Austin, Texas, so let's focus on the size of this thing, using me — a woman of average height — for measurement.

Not to mention the hideous faux-black letter typeface, the clumsy, confused design and the coarseness of the stone carving. It looks like a bad headstone! Did they order these up from their local Rock Of Ages franchise?

Harold J. Berman argues in his book Law & Revolution: The Impact of the Protestant Reformation on the Western Legal Tradition (Harvard UP 2003) that Lutheran law from about 1520 until about 1700 was very strongly focused on using the last 7 commandments (Lutherans count them differently) as the basis of Civil Law.

Thou Shalt Not Steal, for instance, became the basis of property law (89).

I'm not a lawyer, much less a legal historian, but I find the information in Berman's book compelling.

I was trying to figure out whch version of the 10 Commandments was used. Initially, I thought that it couldn't be the Roman Catholic version, because it included the prohibition on idolatry, but according to Wikipedia, that is what it looks like was used.

When I first looked at them, it looked like there were actually 11 or 12 commandments listed. But then I noticed, when I looked more carefully, that some of what looked like commandments were actually indented, making them, I guess, mini-commandments.

So, three things make me think that this is the RC/Lutheran version:- combining the first two commandments (according to Jews, Orthodox, and Protestants - though they all split them up a bit differently).- Splitting the 10th (according, again, to all the other versions)- Use of the word "kill" instead of "murder" (though this could be a recent reinterpretation).

The long version of the 10th Commandment may indicate though that this is the Lutheran version, instead of the Roman Catholic version.

They look like the version I learned, so Lutheran, no matter that they're next to impossible to read even from up close and despite the hugeness of the huge monument.

And the excuse about it being just like all the other monuments when it's huge and set prominently in its own place might be lame but those excuses are probably still more useful than the truth which is saying "grow some stones, wiener boy" to anyone who feels oppressed by the evidence that religious sentiment informs the concept of right and wrong for most people.

Because it does.

Putting other versions of law out there with similar prominence would be so much less oppressive. We could do with some "Eye for an Eye" eh?

Plus, we need PBOE occasionally for a cornerhold in a stubborn crossword.

I can imagine the monolith in a museum, like the code of Hammurabi, which is full of stuff about how grievances about slaves are to be settled, this one crammed with Americana iconography. Were it given to the Smithsonian they would have to warehouse it.

But now I wonder, as I'm in possession of a Moche poster, which is also being warehoused, depicting one of their double-beaked clay vessels, which is also in a museum and is also completely covered with Moche iconography. Just like this slab, it tries to say in pictures all that archaic stuff rolling about in their heads. They're trying really hard, stone-hard to inculcate their values to their kids. Says so in the dedication. So I'm wondering now after visiting here if those indians sat around critiquing their vases imagining them in some distant museum or somehow otherwise out of their lives.

Luther's Small Catechism doesn't list the phrase, "Thy shall Not Make to Thyself Any Graven Images." Elsewhere, Luther wrote that Christians can make art, it's part of our freedom thanks to Christ, and that anybody can do it.

(Orthodox Jewish people -- like Muslims -- forbid it.)

At any rate, I think that this isn't the correct wording for the Lutheran version, but I'm not sure.

Who made the sculpture again, and when? And who paid for it? What is it made out of?

I certainly don't think that it's appropriate to lean against the Ten Commandments swinging your purse and looking for sailors like it's a lamppost in the Combat Zone. I can just see Edward G. Robinson in his sandals with black socks saying " What da ya think of your Moses now, see..."

http://www.foe.com/"For more than a century, the Fraternal Order of Eagles has had a major positive influence on our region, nation, world...and most importantly on our communities.

It was the Eagles who pushed for the founding of Mother's Day, who provided the impetus for Social Security and, who pushed to end job discrimination based on age. The Eagles have provided support for medical centers across the country to build and provide research for medical conditions — we raise millions of dollars every year to combat heart disease and cancer, help handicapped kids, uplift the aged and make life a little brighter for everyone."

The most important Commandment was left off. It could have been the version used or lack of space.

And the Lord spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then, shalt thou count to three. No more. No less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once at the number three, being the third number be reached, then, lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it."

I fear that women who have grown old are more sceptical in the secret recesses of their hearts than any of the men; they believe in the superficiality of existence as in its essence, and all virtue and profoundity is to them only the disguising of thie truth, the very desireable disguising of a pudendum - an affair, therefore, of decency and modesty, and nothing more. Nietzsche, Joyful Wisdom

Walter Neff: "I certainly don't think that it's appropriate to lean against the Ten Commandments swinging your purse and looking for sailors like it's a lamppost in the Combat Zone. I can just see Edward G. Robinson in his sandals with black socks saying " What da ya think of your Moses now, see..."

Basically, I'm paying a friendly visit to a celebrity from the Supreme Court case law. But I assumed this position quite intentionally. It's my statement, and it's all about diversity of speech, and I"m doing my expression even as the Fraternal Order of Eagles did theirs. What does my statement mean? It means that I don't think this belongs on government property, but I accept Justice Breyer's idea that it's been here a long time and it would seem hostile to religion to cart it off now.

"Ann, I find it interesting that in the first picture you are pointing to the commandment against taking the name of the Lord in vain...coincidence? or is that the one you tend to break most often?"

No, it's because it's the part that most makes this monument a problem under the Establishment Clause, a subject I teach.

"The question really is how many of these commandments did you break this weekend?"